Month: November 2021

During his marathon monologue, Kevin McCarthy argued that nobody voted for Biden to be the new FDR. AOC’s interjection notwithstanding, was he right?

In a sense, yes; the 2020 election was a referendum on Trump, because both sides wanted it that way. The size of the state was not really an issue. On the other hand, nobody voted for Trump’s tax cuts in 2016, either, so McCarthy’s question missed the point. The real issue is, what are the voters really voting for?

I submit to you that an American election is mostly a contest between two teams with different visions of what this country should look like. The blue team sees America as a complex, multi-racial democracy; the red team thinks white men have a God-given right to rule, but are currently oppressed by women and minorities. Identity politics thus prevail among the vast majority of voters; abstract ideas about the size of the state only matter on the fringes. Since the two groups are fairly evenly matched, presidential elections are ultimately decided by the handful of swing voters who are motivated primarily by economic self-interest.

On this theory, Biden won the election because a majority of Americans decided that a red team led by Trump could not be trusted to run the country properly. They held no firm opinions as to whether the size of the welfare state should be increased, decreased, or held constant; they just wanted Trump and his divisiveness gone. That’s not a mandate to create new social programs, but it’s not a mandate not to, either. If Biden and the Democrats want to be bold and pursue an agenda of replacing the dollar store economy with a more worker-friendly version, the outcome of the 2024 election will depend on the fruits of their labor, as determined by the swing voters.

If you’re the governor of a red state, cleansing your public universities of left-wing bias is going to be a grindingly slow process, but it is conceptually simple; after all, you pay the salaries of these people. Surveys, monitors, and right-wing provocateurs can all be used to out the wokes and the commies. It will take time, but it can be done.

Private universities are a different matter, since you don’t control them. But, hey, if you win the presidency, it’s a brand new ball game! Many students rely on federal guarantees to pay their tuition; maybe you can condition the use of those funds, as well as federal funds for research, on the teaching of truth, as you see it!

Don’t be surprised if you start seeing ideas like this being thrown around the next time a Republican becomes president. The real question is whether it is already too late. Gen Z has no use for the GOP; the chances of changing that at this point are very poor.

So the Court will soon overturn Roe.

We will see just how far they will go.

We know Roe will be dead.

What will rise in its stead?

Will the process be faster or slow?

Several months ago, I was watching a French documentary on Louis XIV on Amazon Prime. At one point, a female historian was talking about the Sun King’s virility, and about how hot his mistresses were. She did this with great pride.

That would never happen in America. It also explains why “le wokeisme” will never have much of a following in France, at least with regard to sexual politics. Traditional roles are too baked into the culture to let it happen.

Reactionaries, of course, have their own safe spaces in the MSM, starting with Fox News. That’s not good enough; they need to silence the left, as well. Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine isn’t going to have any appeal for Rupert Murdoch, so that’s out. What can a good reactionary do?

There are two options. The first is the Hungarian template: win power; subject the left-leaning MSM to as much regulatory harassment as possible; and get your wealthy allies to buy any TV network or publication that supports the left. The second is to get the Supreme Court to change its position on libel law, and then start filing suits to ruin the MSM. Justice Thomas, for one, would be happy to oblige you.

Your problem is that there may not be enough obscenely rich reactionaries out there to buy out Jeff Bezos, let alone the large corporations that run the TV networks, and First Amendment jurisprudence is well-established; in other words, America ain’t Hungary. Barring a national emergency that permits you to throw the First Amendment out the window, becoming the American Orban isn’t going to be easy. That doesn’t mean you won’t try, however. Your constituents will demand it.

You’ve probably seen the commercial for Alexa featuring an elderly black couple dancing to their favorite romantic song. Two years ago, I can guarantee you that the couple would have been white. The trend towards inclusiveness in ads is unmistakable.

That illustrates the difficulty the right will have dealing with “woke capitalism.” They can keep corporations from making overtly political statements with threats of boycotts and arbitrary regulatory action, but they can’t really do much to influence corporate culture, or how it manifests itself in commercials. Even emergency political powers wouldn’t do the trick. It is a war that is doomed to fail.

Leviathan is unstoppable, moans The Economist. Not even Reagan and Thatcher could stop it. With demographic and climate change, it is bound to get even bigger. All that freedom-loving people can do is restrain it and try to make it more efficient.

How much of this is true? It is accurate to say that Reagan and Thatcher did little to limit the size of the welfare state; Thatcher’s causes were privatization and smashing union power, while Reagan was more into tax cuts and deregulation. It is misleading, however, to suggest that the history of the last 40 years has been one of new and dramatically expanded welfare programs; in fact, the increase in GDP percentage is due largely to three other reasons:

1. The demographic change driving more public spending isn’t in the near future, as the article suggests; it has been here for at least a decade. Boomers have been retiring on the taxpayers’ dime and enjoying low cost health care since 2011;
2. Rising unit costs for education and health care represent a bipartisan failure of government, not a deliberate effort to expand the state; and
3. Military spending is a much higher percentage of GDP than it was back in, say, the good old days of the 1920s. The Economist doesn’t pay any attention to that.

It is undoubtedly true that an aging population and climate change mitigation will add a few more percentage points to GDP in the coming years, as there is no free market solution to either of these problems. It is also correct to say that small government liberals should focus their attention on making the system more efficient. That is in everyone’s best interest, regardless of ideology.

The key to winning elections is mobilizing the base with left-wing spending programs, according to progressives. No, the objective is to flip swing voters, says the center-left. Who is correct?

Both, and neither; it depends on the type of election. In presidential elections, with their relatively high turnout, swing voters are the key. In midterm elections, with a lower turnout, mobilizing the base is more important.

If you’re a Democrat, cheer up–at least your party is having this debate, and takes both sides seriously. The GOP has put all of its chips on base mobilization. That will help in 2022, but not in 2024.

Complaining about gas prices? Bitching that Biden isn’t doing enough to bring back the good old days of $2 per gallon gas? Well, your ship has come in! With the discovery of the new variant, crude oil prices are already falling! Gas prices shouldn’t be far behind.

There are two morals to this story: there are worse things than inflation; and be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.

The new year came in with a bang.

Some right wing nuts said Pence should hang.

The system held, by just a thread

But at the cost of several dead.

____________

Things got better after that.

The country got up off the mat.

But summer brought the virus back;

The right’s still gearing to attack.

_____________

We’re vaccinated, and ok.

We used the time to get away.

This spring, we went to New Orleans

Where we explored the Land of Dreams.

________________

We traveled through our new home state.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is just great.

From the mountains to the beach,

Lots of beauty within reach.

_________________

If it’s history you seek,

I recommend the Chesapeake.

We also flew to NYC,

But Covid cancelled Germany.

__________________

What comes next, I do not know.

Biden has three years to go.

If you root for the blue team,

Things aren’t as bad as they might seem.

Gas costs more today than it did a few months ago, but it is less expensive than it was in 2008 and from 2011 to 2014. In the broader context, this is far from an emergency. The release of a small amount of oil from the Petroleum Reserve was, therefore, a token effort to prove that the federal government really does care about inflation. Biden feels our pain, in other words. It is his stock in trade.

Consider me unimpressed. This looks like something Trump would do.

As far as I know, we haven’t heard from Tucker yet, but the right appears to be pleased with the verdict in the Arbery murder case. As they see it, the verdict proves America isn’t racist. Are they right?

Well, if racism isn’t a big problem in this country, why is Arbery dead? Does anyone seriously believe the three men would have followed him down the street with guns if he had been white? We can’t know for certain, of course, but experience gives us a clear answer to the question.

A guilty verdict is the best we can do at this point, but it isn’t justice, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Trump is no longer president: Thankful.

But he’s still around, and a danger to our system: Not.

I’m getting a raise from Social Security: Thankful.

But it’s because of inflation, which–mostly unjustifiably–is damaging Biden politically: Not.

I’m in Florida, and the sun is shining: Thankful.

But I’m supposed to be on vacation in Berlin: Not.

At least I didn’t have to wear a mask for 24 hours straight: Thankful.

But I’m probably going to eat a lot of nonrefundable money: Not.

I don’t have the virus, I don’t have to work anymore, and I don’t have any serious financial worries: Thankful.

That clinches it for thankful. Happy Thanksgiving!

Rittenhouse walked; the Arbery defendants were convicted. What do we make of this? That a teenage defendant who cries on the stand gets more sympathy than older men who don’t? That it was the more violent environment in Wisconsin that made the self-defense argument more credible? That Georgia juries have a different perspective on self-defense than Wisconsin juries?

My guess is that it was all of those things–particularly #2. The good news is that the two cases didn’t collectively send the message that a white man with a gun is automatically entitled to a presumption of self-defense and must, therefore, be obeyed by unarmed members of the public. From a policy perspective, that is what really matters here.

Jamelle Bouie thinks Biden’s position in late 2021 is analogous to Reagan’s around 1982. Is he right?

The analogy is not ridiculous, but no, because the condition of the country is quite different. Reagan’s GOP was crushed in the 1982 elections because we were mired in a deep recession engineered by the Fed in order to put an end to inflation. When the Fed eased up, the economy roared back to life–just in time for the 1984 election. Biden, on the other hand, has already presided over a recovery, spending plenty of public money in the process. There is no “Morning in America” in the offing; in a way, it is already here, but is insufficiently appreciated by the public and the MSM.

That doesn’t mean Biden’s position is hopeless–not by a long shot. Inflation will probably be a distant memory by 2024, and maybe even by November, 2022. The GOP will be campaigning against the extension of popular public benefits. And, of course, there is the Trump factor. Surely moderate opinion will rally against him, as it did in 2020, if he runs again. Even if he doesn’t, all of the GOP contenders will be falling all over themselves to win his approval during the primaries, which is almost the same thing.